Football transfers are not cheap. To have a player strengthen their ranks, teams are willing to pay big money. The football transfer considered to be the most expensive in the sport's history was that of Gareth Bale leaving Tottenham to play at Real Madrid. The Spanish club paid not less than £86 million (about $133 million at today's exchange rates) to have the player among its own. But recent news suggest that this record might be broken this year. According to reports in the media, UK Premier League team Manchester United is willing to almost double that amount.

Model Luma Grothe poses on red carpet as he arrives for the screening of the film “Julieta” in competition at the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, May 17, 2016. (Photo by Regis Duvignau/Reuters)

An idol of Buddha is kept in a courtyard as an artist gives it a finishing touch ahead of the Samyak festival in Lalitpur, Nepal, March 11, 2016. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

A mother of a victim who was onboard sunken ferry Sewol, leaves a message on a desk used by her child at an empty classroom, which was preserved since the disaster, at Danwon high school during the second anniversary of the disaster in Ansan, South Korea, April 16, 2016. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

This undated photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows two island foxes in Channel Islands National Park, Calif. Three fox subspecies native to California's Channel Islands were removed from the list of endangered species Thursday, August 11, 2016, in what federal officials have called the fastest recovery of any mammal listed under the Endangered Species Act. (Photo by Chuck Graham/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP Photo)

Lindsay Heimbach goes airborne while sledding down a hill on Mt. Lemmon December 27, 2008. (Photo by James Gregg/Arizona Daily Star)

The Belgian photographer Anton Kusters spent two years photographing the Yakuza, Japan’s most notorious gang. He returned with some amazing images that he made into a book called “Odo Yakuza Tokyo”. (Odo means “the way of the cherry blossom” and is the credo of the Yakuza family he followed. Photo: An erotic danser picks up fake 2-dollar bills during a private dance with a Yakuza customer in a strip tease bar in Kabukicho, a bar which is controlled by the ODO family – 2010. (Photo and caption by Anton Kusters)

A young supporter of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dressed like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives with his mother during a public meeting addressed by Modiin Hyderabad, India, Sunday, July 3, 2022. (Photo by Mahesh Kumar A./AP Photo)